The Dragon War
What was the Dragon War? The Dragon War was an on-going period for around 200 years,1500 years before the time in which the campaign takes place. The First Stage It first began with the masses of Chromatic Dragons fighting the Metallic Dragons. It involved much warring; but due to the planning of this for several 1000s of years on the Chromatic Dragons end, causing them to breed incessantly, they won for the reason of sheer numbers. To honour the fight of the Metallic dragons, many good-aligned human organisations now use a metallic dragon scale as a symbol to represent goodness and a fight towards evil. After the end of the Metallic dragons, the last few remaining fleed across the seas to search for faraway continents in which the Chromatic dragons needn't bother to enter, as although not much is known about such places, one thing is certain; they have no traces of arcane magic. The Chromatic Dragons then began to attack the elder races. The Second Stage This turned out to be a harder fight than the ones in which they fought the Metallic Dragons. The Elder Races had a warning, they saw what was coming. So, they began to train, forging weapons with Dragon-slaying properties in the hopes of destroying the masses of dragons tearing down their cities. Ironically, the end of the Elder races was not caused by the dragons. In many ways, it was, but at the same time, without corruption of their own, it is believed likely that the Elder Races could have survived this bloody battle. But, no, it is a common trait of those who can think to give in to selfish desires of wealth and greed; which was something the Dragons had much of. See, the thing a dragon desires most of all is wealth. Gems, jewels, magic items. Anything that shines or possesses some special quality, they love. This is something in which both the Metallic Dragons and Chromatic Dragons both shared, and so when the Chromatic Dragons decimated the Metallic Dragons during the first stage of the Dragon war, they did not only double in power, but also in luxuries. These dragons, with all their intelligence, knew the frivolities of society, and so, transforming into a humanoid form, they entered the towns and convinced wizards, sorcerers, druids and others to begin to plague their towns with disasters. Disease. Blight. Earthquakes. The powerful items and the sanctuary the dragons offered was too much for the scum of the Elder races to resist, and so they gave in. These disasters weakened these towns, disease and starvation easy ways to kill warriors without having to enter the gruesome battles of whe ar. So, when dragons stormed their settlements, many many dragons were killed once again, but in the end , the Elder races did fall. First to fall were the dwarves. The Dragons saw them as the ultimate threat as they knew how to forge dragon-slayer weaponry and were the race that the gods favoured the most, as divine magic was in their veins in the same way that arcane magic was in the Elves'. They fought a valiant fight they did and were likely the race that killed the most of the dragons. Our history records show that after the end of the dwarves, humankind still held hope that Elves or maybe even the gnomes could kill off the monsters. But, alas they could not. The next to perish were the elves. Red Dragons were the ones to destroy their wooden homes. The secrecy of the dwarves over their recipes caused them to have no dragon slayer weaponry, leaving them to hope that their wizards could defend them. Those, along with their longbows and magical gear, was not enough to rid the threat of the dragons, as every settlement was burnt to ash, along with their corpses. The gnomes, the only ones to know the secrets of illusion. Illusion magic, however, wasn't a particularly useful thing against gargantum creatures who only knew how to destroy. Only around a decade after the elven settlements were destroyed, the gnomish ones were as well. However, so many dragons died within the war, some suspect there are only dozens of adult ones left, strewn across our continent. Whether this is true or not, no one knows. However, dragons have left us humans mostly alone for the last 700 years, meaning we did not perish with the elder races. Stage Three Humans had managed to receive messages, some survivors even of the wars, and they joined our societies. However, from these messages, we also learnt of the ways in which these races which held more magic than us chose to destroy their own. This caused much fear. If they were willing to betray their own race, what would stop them from destroying us, when most of them already thought of humans as lesser lifeforms, with shorter lifeforms and less magical presence. Human weren't known for anything special, and for this reason, the humans could not trust the few remaining members of the Elder Races. The last few survivors of the Elder races were found killed in their beds, within 50 years of the Chromatic Dragons destroying their cities. Even those with only half the blood were not to be trusted; they could as easily identify with them as they could with us. It is now often questioned whether dragons charmed people to do this, or if they came in a human form to do it themselves. Some people are reclusive for this reason, as they wonder whether anyone they know could be a dragon just waiting in place to attack. Along with the end of the Elder races, anyone with the blood of devils was killed. Tieflings, they were known as. Half-human, half-devil creatures, they were already feared, people stared and whispered around them, some already looking to purge them long before the dragon wars. So, they were slaughtered, everywhere and anywhere, to make sure they did not go join the monsters in which they could relate to. Dragonborns were treated with as much disparity as the Tieflings, if not more. They originated from the dragons, after all. Whether they were chromatic or metallic, neither were trusted. Some believe that many of them ally with the dragons and that far, in the forests, they have their own civilizations. However, nothing has been brought forth to prove this point. A few members of the Elder Races are occasionally found, living reclusively in forests. Many of them are found to be insane with the reclusiveness of their lifestyle. Now, all we can do is pray that there will never be a Stage Four to the war, as it will be an end to us all.